July 2002

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I'm not exactly sure at what point in my life I came to the notion that "change" is a bad word. But it is. My idea of an acceptable level of change (as in, not too much stress to handle) stops at wearing clean clothes. Beyond that, I get stressed. The amount of change involved determines the level of stress.

It really doesn't matter whether the change itself is good or not; the stress comes from having to leave something familiar behind.

Over the years I have developed different methods of dealing with change-induced stress. The method used, of course, depends on the amount of stress involved. The highest level has me calling in the moral-support troops and actually telling them that's what's going on, so they'll know they're being asked to listen.

The friend who called me asking for my thoughts about freelance work was basically doing that the other day. He did want some advice, which was fairly quickly given. But what he mainly wanted was some moral support. He got that, too, because he's my friend.

One of the loveliest examples of friendship during a terribly stressful time I have heard of recently is in this entry Wendy wrote. At the end of it, she asks us to hold Ray's family in our thoughts. I can tell you nature was doing so today. We had a cloudy day, with early-morning rain.

But today felt different from most cloudy-rainy days. It felt like the sky was weeping.